


In the Forests of Sussex

by NotVictorHugo



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Autistic Newt Scamander, Pre-Fantastic Beasts, Retired Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-05 01:18:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17315363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotVictorHugo/pseuds/NotVictorHugo





	In the Forests of Sussex

The young man's back was slightly hunched, while his eyes darted around with curiosity, never stopping in the same place for too long: they were keen on absorbing every tree, every branch of that wonderful British forest. 

He walked at a very slow pace. The reasons for this were threefold. First, there was the most obvious one: he was carrying a huge leathery suitcase on his side, and it would be uncomfortable to walk fast with it, for it would have made his arms swing uncomfortably. The second one, very personal, was that he truly feared scaring any of the living creatures of that forest. It was, after all, their home, and he was but an intruder there, a guest at most. It would be awfully rude of him to go sprinting around, scaring the living soul of his guests. 

And the third was, plan and simple, that he was not in a hurry. He had, in fact, all the time in the world. He had been walking like that most of the day: not very fast, with a slightly awkward gait that wouldn't be unhelpful when climbing mountains, and his lips folded as if whistling, pushing out some air, but carefully enough to avoid making any sound.

He heard a crack nearby, and he bit his lip before stopping. He listened. A new crack. He whistled a short tune made of four notes and reached his wand with his right hand. Silence. A new cracking. He whistled again, and something grunted. Two big red eyes shone on a bush nearby.

"I'm your friend, buddy" said Newt Scamander, squatting to be at the creature's level. "I won't do you any harm, I promise"

The creature grunted again. Newt knew what to do. He had done it hundreds of times before. Memories started flowing in his mind.

The Sorting Hat shouting "Hufflepuff!" and a whole table clapping at him. The wind hitting his face and ruffling his hair while riding his mother's favourite hypogriff. The smell of All Saint's Eve at Hogwarts. "Hi, I'm Leta, what's your name?"

"Expecto Patronum", he whispered. His memories slowly materialized into a ghastly silver cloud of incense smoke through his wand, slowly taking the shape of a white stoat as the air became as warm as a Christmas dinner around the chimney. The young man smiled.

Meanwhile, the stoat had approached the creature and was now talking to it. Could that be considered talking? It was more of an empathy thing, really. The Patronus shared a feeling. "Newt isn't going to hurt you", it said directly into the creature's soul, "Leaving the bushes is safe. Also, he has food!". And, since it was spoken to its soul, and since it ringed with the pitch of truth, the creature believed it. It slowly approached the man in the blue coat, its red eyes blinking to get used to the light. 

It was a beautiful tiny creature, covered with the fluffiest, most purple coat of hair that one could ever imagine, so long and frizzy that it looked almost spherical in nature.

"So, we've got a mainscore, don't we? And a healthy one, at that!" mumbled the young man, smiling to himself. He squatted and tapped his knee. "Come here, buddy!"

The creature came closer and sat on his knee, and Newton Scamander started tickling it all around its belly until the Mainscore fell asleep. He could know begin his investigation. 

It was an art he had been developing over the years. One needed to be observant if he wanted to become a magizoologist, but even more if he wanted to take that field from the superstition-based hobble-gobble it was until then to a more scientific one that would optimize the care of those beasts. He had to be fast if he wanted to finish with the creature before it woke up.

With a swift hand he clipped a couple of hairs from its back and looked at them carefully. Their colour faded as soon as they left the body. He took mental note of that and put them in an empty cristal bottle. He looked at its paws and took its footprints with an ink-based method he had been working on. He opened its left eye with his thumb and noticed that the eyes had become blue. Finally, he noted all of this in his wearied notebook. "Okay, beastie, enough sleep!" he said, waking it up by shaking it softly. Nearly half an hour had passed and he was done, but it was dangerous for small creatures to be left asleep in the middle of a clearing.

The creature jumped awake and left. First, its body disappeared, leaving only its blue eyes there, floating, looking at Newt. Then, they vanished, too.

Newt stood up and opened his suitcase, putting inside, once more, his notebook, the footprints and the cristal bottle, as well as the results of the many more tests he had been doing. "Where were we going again?", he muttered. "Oh, yes, Sussex Cliffs". 

A shiver shook his back, and he felt his hair standing up. A chilling cry had reached his ears from the depths of the forest. It was the cry of an augurey. The bird who announced death. The song kept bouncing inside his head, bringing memories. Leta Lestrange. "You'll be expelled from Hogwarts, young man". "Hey, Scamander, maybe they'll break your wand" "No way, he already passed his OWLs" "Yeah, but who knows? That freak really went too far this time".

The echo of the song vanished, and he fell once more in reality. It was beginning to rain.


End file.
